Dan Rather feted for career, support for press freedom

As he exited his car and entered the performance center, the
man in the dark pinstriped suit caught the attention of a few people, who
trailed after him. The small crowd greeted him respectfully and
enthusiastically, as someone they felt they had known all their lives. In
return he shook hands calmly and asked the names of his greeters. He was veteran
television news anchor and reporter Dan Rather.

Rather is this year's recipient of the Committee to Protect
Journalists' Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in
defending press freedom. At an event Thursday commemorating CPJ's three decades
of battling for free expression, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Rather
was interviewed by PBS's Gwen
Ifill, where he discussed today's challenges to independent journalism as
well as his own career.

The interview was preceded by the screening of a documentary
chronicling CPJ's 30 years of advocacy. "Frankly, we would not exist if
not for Dan Rather," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon, adding that
Rather sought out the organization and offered his involvement. He then
recruited Walter
Cronkite, another American television icon, who became CPJ's honorary
chairman. "Their involvement gave the fledging organization the legitimacy
it needed," Simon said.

Ifill steered Rather to reflect on the core values of
journalism, the role of information for a free society and the state of
American journalism today. He discussed his journeys to Texas, the former
Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan, and remembered interviews with Saddam Hussein and Muammar
Qaddafi. He also reflected on the roots of his calling to become a journalist:
"My father described the newspaper as a poor man's college," he said, noting
that quality journalism can change people's sense of what they deem to be
important.

Regarding today's journalism landscape, in which half the
journalists requiring some sort of assistance from CPJ are online journalists, Rather
said that online media "broadens and deepens our work" for press freedom at
CPJ.

But he said the Internet has contributed to the challenge of
financing credible, thorough reporting in a sustainable manner. News standards
have been plummeting since the 1980s, he said, pointing to what he termed
"politicization, corporatization, and trivialization."

"No more than six international conglomerates that own all
kinds of businesses control 80 percent of the distribution of news in this
country," Rather said, adding that those corporations "are in bed with big
government."

"This is a short, medium and long-term threat to the kind of
free and independent journalism that we have known," he said. Rather also
decried "entertainment values that have overwhelmed information values" and led
to "news programming that is in fact entertainment programming, with people
shouting at each other."

Still, Rather said he believes in the fundamental importance
of the profession. He defines being a journalist this way: "You feel you are a
holder of the public trust and seek the truth to the best extent possible, and
tell the story with integrity."

Gypsy Guillén Kaiser is CPJ’s advocacy and communications director. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York, she began her career as a journalist after graduating from New York University.